


Six Months

by GravitasErrant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Romance, Season 3 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-18 18:20:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21281171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GravitasErrant/pseuds/GravitasErrant
Summary: We know how Jemma spent six of the longest months of her life but how did her other half live?Season 3 AU that fills in the gap about what Fitz and SHIELD had done in the aftermath of Afterlife and before finding Simmons
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	Six Months

**Author's Note:**

> This is still a work in progress but it's nice to get back into writing for fandoms again (I used to write on fanfiction.net a while back, so this format is a bit alien now). Especially since FitzSimmons is one of the very few TV couples that I actively root for and believe in. I wanted to write this because I was really interested in seeing what was driving Fitz to go to insane measures and examine his devotion and love. Also, part of the inspiration of this was rewatching "The Constant" episode on Lost. You'll see its influence on this soon!
> 
> Please enjoy and comment my first return in years to writing for fanfic again

_London, May 2016_

Voices everywhere. Passerby gave nervous glances at the man passing by them.

“Can you hear me, Turbo?”

Not the voice Leopold Fitz needed. He hung up the phone without answering and tossed it into the water as he limped. 

“C-c-an y-yo—”

Fitz held something tight in his jacket. “Talk to me, Simmons. Just because a bloody rock—”

“Auth-auth-authorities are approaching, Agent F-F-“ A staccato tone from a…woman? No, not a woman. Neither a man. “Leopold. Nearest safehouse is 4.23 kilometers due south. Warning: Central node compromised. Higher heuristics unable to assist.  
Auxiliary node active.”

Fitz growled as he pressed a bloodied palm against his earpiece. “Well, that’s bloody fantastic help.”

“Emergency Primary contact: Coulson, Phil. Connecting.”

“No!”

“Secondary contact: Johnson, Dai—”

“Not her!” 

“Tertiary contact: Unavailable. Agent missing in action.”

“Dammit!”

His bellow echoed through the London tunnel. Fitz staggered and limped against the concave brick wall, dirtying his bespoke jacket with grout and chipped paint. His hand shook as he frantically tapped at his glasses, cycling through traffic patterns and MI-5 tracking. Any way out. He collapsed to the ground; his pale face even paler in the dim blue lamp light. 

“Action required. Central compromised. Contacts compromised. Safehouse 40 minutes away at current rate of speed. Arrest likely. Action required.”

Fitz growled and sharply coughed, his throat too dry and strained to speak. “Just…just. Just speak to me, Simmons.”

A gentle and prim British accent now spoke. “Action required.”

“Not you, bloody robot. Simmons. Just…speak. Please.” He slid against the wall, finding a decent sitting position to catch his breath. 

“Action required, Leopold. Authorities are on the way. Recommended immediate action: attend to bruised sternum. Estimated two-minute action required before lung capacity is--.”

Fitz groaned. It was even worse with her voice. It perfectly caught how Jemma called him Leopold whenever she was mad at him for ignoring her advice. “Default voice setting. Don’t talk until I’m done.”  
He reached into his jacket, pulled out a medi-gel pack and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling up the undershirt. Fitz wheezed as he tried to suck in enough air and bend enough to look at the bruises. It was like drowning again. 

The pain arching up and down his chest and back, Fitz decided to focus on where it hurt most under his fingers to apply. The pack stuck to his right side and heated like a branding iron before sharply freezing. Tiny pinpricks stapled up and down his ribs as it spread. Fitz hissed as relief slowly flowed through his side. He then pulled off his glasses and earpiece for some peace as he waited the medi-gel to fully solidify. “Happy, Simmons?”

“No.” 

“I thought I said default voice!” Fitz’s head jerked up with a start. He then realized his earpiece was off and his eyes widened in shock.

Jemma Simmons in a sweater and collared shirt stood with her arms crossed. Her hair was perfectly curled, and her hazelnut eyes were narrowed at him. She was still so beautiful. “Fitz, I’m going to only say this once and mostly because you’re about to pass out right now. Stop searching for me.”  
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________  
_The Playground, March 2016_

“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”

Fitz winced and shook his head before tossing the book into the box. He got up from his knees, hands pressed into the small of his back as he stood up. After a moment, Fitz gazed around Simmons’ empty room, taking in the faint dust that gathered on her shelves. “Wanker could’ve just said ‘Thanks for letting me die. Best thing I’ve ever done, mate.’”

“Would’ve lacked some noble flair, mate.” Hunter stood, arms crossed and leaning against the doorframe. “Also, your Northern accent needs work.”

“I’m Scottish.” Fitz muttered. Any more North and he’d be neighbors with Santa.

“Can’t prove that. Haven’t drank me under the table yet.”

“Nobody’s that Scottish,” rumbled Mack. The large man walked past Hunter and hefted the box. “Turbo, you okay? You don’t need to do this yourself.”

“And leave it up to those idiots?” 

“Turbo.”

“Simmons wouldn’t want any idiots messing with her organization system.”

Silence filled the air like noxious gas as Hunter and Mack exchanged glances. The unspoken truth and the agreed upon lie. Whose turn was it?  
Mack coughed. “They’re not idiots. Even if they are, it’s not that hard for her parents to put it back together. You’ve got other things to do, Turbo.”

“No, I don’t.” Fitz picked up the box, his arms trembling under the weight. 3 weeks rewatching footage and fevered researching had taken up any time he’d had for sleep, food, or exercise. “We’re still waiting on the Iliad files to be decrypted. Might as well do something useful.”

“Yes, you’re right, Agent Fitz.” Melinda May had walked in with Daisy in tow. Daisy gave a faint smile as if it would cheer Fitz up. “There’s an 084 that Davis’ team just found in Peru. Your drones aren’t working quite correctly. You’re needed in the lab for remote analysis.”

“Bobbi can handle that.”

“Bobbi is already handling the onboarding of your new assistants from Gonzales’ old division. The transition of both divisions of SHIELD is already under high scrutiny since the Council has been asking about how Coulson has somehow come back from the dead.”

Fitz almost refused but something about the way May looked at him brooked no arguments. He sighed and wiped his hands. As he left, he paused just outside the doorframe and out of sight. It wasn’t long before he overheard them.

“Has he slept?”

“No, he just keeps coming here or working on searching for Simmons.”

“There’s only 9 seconds of footage and nonsense historical data from Yucatan. The monolith has been put into quarantine. What could he be working on?” 

“I dunno. Turbo has a lot of things on his mind. He seems to be working on something…new. I’m an engineer but I can’t make heads or tails of the design. It looks like a server but the code he’s working with is…Daisy, you’re a programmer.”

“Honestly, I don’t know either. I think it’s a bunch of machine learning algorithms. Looks like something he asked my advice on when we were tracking Coulson. Did he say that the Iliad files were still encrypted?”

Fitz shook his head before he heard that last sentence and made his way to the lab. At the holo-table, Fitz picked up an earpiece and pressed his palm against the surface, accessing his private projects folder. He eyed one for progress: NSA index complete, awaiting SHIELD level 7 access. 

A display of a map appeared. A shifting web of keywords and records connected to one another almost like the layout of dendrites and neurons in the human brain. The web started streaming results.

Meta-architectural prison/Kree technology homoscedasticity: 23.21% 

Fitz pulled up monolith data along with a board full of Helmholtz equations and material analysis. He began muttering into the earpiece. “Not a liquid. Not a solid. Oscillating irrespective of temperature, pressure, and optics…alien. Obvious.”  
He massaged his temples. Why was he stating the obvious again? Of course, it was alien. He was a genius and was so thick that he could only repeat the obvious over and over again.

“…dimensional energy in a new form of matter? Relate monolith oscillation to current level 6 SHIELD records of tesseract oscillation and refractory optic analysis.”

Tesseract relation: 4.6%

“Why?” Fitz bit his thumb.

Zero polymorphic high energy connections. No absence of mass. 

“Of course, it’s only a bloody rock when it isn’t--Dammit.”

Unknown request. Damn “it”?

“Disregard. I’m going to have to update your nodes. How long until the printer is finished with the next chip clusters?”

18 hours for Daedalus-5.2 cluster completion. Recommendation: Await completion to Daedalus-5.5 for minimized overclock error.

“How long?”

410 hours.

“Rerun spectral analysis until 5.5 is finished and then dedicate new cycles to level 7 access and Iliad breakage.”

He then directed his attention to the 0-8-4. He might as well burn time on this. Now why the hell was a ring an 0-8-4?

Fitz rubbed his face and decided that he needed tea. Unbeknownst to him as he left for a fresh cup, the Web unveiled a new neuron, connecting it to monolith data.  
\---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
_London, March 2016_

Fitz awoke against the wall and scrambled to pick up his glasses and earpiece. He relaxed. Only 3 minutes have passed. Not long enough for permanent brain damage. Although at this point, would he really notice any further difference?

“Stop pitying yourself, Fitz.”

Fitz closed his eyes and swallowed hard. He had to ask for it. “I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” He could almost feel her breath in his ear. That was new. “I know that look on your face. You’re telling yourself that the universe is obviously against you. Again. Because it seems to give you something only to take it away. To prove a point about what you deserve.”

Ignoring the voice, Fitz tapped at his glasses as he tucked in his shirt. A squad car was patrolling 500 meters behind his back. MI5 was no doubt using every CCTV that they could and the safehouse was still a good half hour away by foot.

“It took me. It took what you thought Ward was. It took what SHIELD was supposed to be to you. Something worthwhile where you weren’t alone. Maybe a little misunderstood but not as much. Not like with your classmates or your fath--”

With hands on shaky knees, Fitz stood up and started a slow limp out of the tunnel. He realized that he needed to clean up a bit if he wanted to avoid suspicion on the streets of London. Eyeing the dried blood on his hands and wincing at what was surely a split lip, Fitz regretted throwing out his phone. No way to fully groom himself and make it less obvious he was in a vicious interrogation. He spotted a dingy chip shop out on the corner with a very bored looking clerk through the window, clearly playing with her phone.

“You can’t ignore me. You don’t want to. Not as long as you can still be reminded of my voice.”

Fitz checked for his wallet and took in a deep breath before entering the shop. The girl glanced up.

“Welcome to Harry’s Chip—oh, my god, are you okay?”

Fitz paused for a moment before answering. Which would give the most plausible explanation to his injuries? Glaswegian or Liverpool? “Oh dun’ worry, just a small row with some mates. I’ll be fine after some rest and chips, lass.”

The girl gave a slight sigh but quirked a skeptical eyebrow as she took his cash. Fitz almost rolled his eyes at himself as he half-faked swaying to the restroom. He really didn’t need to keep enforcing stereotypes but here he was acting like his Uncle Hamish after a Man U game. At least he didn’t insult Hunter with his best impression and Fitz had kept to the best kind of lie—easy and only a few shades from the truth.

In the mirror, Fitz examined his face. There was some light bruising on his cheek that was covered up by his stubble. Though he’d need to wash away the dried blood coating on it. His lips were still intact but more than a little swollen. He splashed water over his face, letting the cold wake him up. After washing away the blood, he stared in the mirror as he fumbled with his tie.

“You missed a spot on your jawline.”

Fitz’s eyes darted to a spot on the mirror where Simmons would had to have stood for him to hear. Nobody there. Rubbing the spot on his jaw, Fitz turned to the door, careful to avoid looking directly at where the voice was. “You’re not here. I know that. And the fact I’m hearing you is just a sick joke.”

“From your own brain?”

“Nobody said I had a healthy sense of humor. Least of all you, Simm—hm.” Fitz pressed his lips together before he acknowledged the hallucination as her.

“Even if you don’t believe it’s me and that it’s just your own head. Fine. I’m perhaps the rational part of you. You always thought of me as the pragmatic one. And I’ve always known you were the romantic—”  
Fitz closed the door and found a table near the back of the shop.

“Ugh Fitz! If you don’t believe it’s me, then at least believe it’s some part of you that wants what is best for you. Stop this. You’ve been brutalized. You’re barely hanging onto consciousness. You’re hiding from your friends as much as your, I can’t believe I’m even saying this, enemies. If I’m…” Her voice quivered for a moment. “If I’m really more than—than…just your best friend, then be the same for me. And save yourself.”

“I don’t have enemies.” Fitz petulantly mumbled as he pulled a tablet from his jacket and laid a ring box on it. It was no holotable but it’d have to do.

“You’re right. You don’t have enemies. You have business contacts now. I’d feel better if you had the Master after you or something.”

“Order 14 up!”

Fitz glanced up and heard one last whisper from Simmons before seeing who was at the counter. “Speak of the devil.”

A slender blonde woman in a bespoke pantsuit and scarlet scarf waved cheerfully at Fitz before picking up the chips and heading over to his table. To the girl at the counter, she must’ve looked like some elegant art curator with her refined clothing and haughty handsome face. Knowing better than this, Fitz grimaced and nodded as he tapped on the tablet, getting ready for the exchange. How the hell did she track him down with his phone in the Thames?

“Teresa.”

“Leopold.” The woman smirked, creasing what looked like a fading lip piercing. She picked up a chip and enthusiastically chewed as her eyes roamed over him. “Did you get what you needed?”

Groaning slightly as he shifted in his seat, Fitz stared intently at the readout: Zero polymorphic high energy connections. No absence of mass.

“Maybe,” Fitz said softly. Hope just within his grasp. 

“Good, then maybe you also got what we wanted from the Turkish?”

“It’ll be uploaded once I can confirm this ring is the genuine article.”

“And if it isn’t?”

“We’ll find out in a couple minutes. While we wait, maybe you can explain to me why you told them who I actually was? My cover was as an MI6 contractor on NATO loan since you lot are too embarrassed to be seen directly dealing with them after Ankara. Not as Leopold Fitz, SHIELD agent and one of the few experts on Afterlife inhumans.”

“They were on the edge of backing out of the meeting because of Ankara. Your reputation brought them back.”

“Where they kindly trapped me in that bloody club and questioned with a cricket bat about where Afterlife inhumans left to.”

“Ankara lost them all of their inhumans.”

“Yeah and whose fault was that? You bombed a hospital ward because you thought the Turks had inhuman assets ready to be sold to the black market,” Fitz said flatly. 

“Not our bomb. We didn’t know the bastards hired ex-Hydra to condition. Not even the Turks would be crazy enough to install deadman switches on every inhuman they got their hands on.”

“You’re still responsible.”

“Fine, I’m sorry you had to experience some discomfort before you got out.”

“I don’t care.”

Teresa frowned and leaned forward in the cheap plastic chair, lightly holding Fitz’s hand before it made another tap at the screen. “I really am. I told Bobbi that working with us would be…complicated since we don’t have the same safety standards as SHIELD. We’re the Service. We’re already disavowed before you even heard a whisper of our name.” 

“I still don’t care.” About your opinion or your half-assed sense of regret. All that mattered was what information the ring had. It had to be related to the monolith. 

“Are you badly injured?” Teresa gripped his hand tighter, spreading his fingers out. There were still little dots of blood in the grooves of his palm. 

Fitz didn’t bother looking up. “I’ll be fine. You’ll get your data on their inhuman index if you’ll let me finish.”

Taking the hint, Teresa let go of his hand and sat silently as he worked. It wasn’t until Fitz carefully lifted the ring box and put it in his pocket that she spoke again. “I really wouldn’t hold onto that for too long if you believe the myths about it.”

“What myths?”

“The myth of that ring is that it drives people mad with the voices of ghosts.”

Fitz finally looked away from the tablet and at Teresa and what was behind her—Simmons, still in that sweater and giving a faint frown toward Teresa. Her gaze was focused on how close Teresa’s hand was to Fitz’s.

He took a shaky breath. “I don’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fitz may or may not be crazy. And Teresa may or may not be genuinely concerned for Fitz.
> 
> That's all I can give away for now.


End file.
